Collection # P 0414 WRTV-6 (MCGRAW-HILL BROADCASTING, INC.) FILM COLLECTION, 1920–1980 (BULK 1949–1980) Collection Information 1 Historical Sketch 2 Scope and Content Note 5 Contents 7 Cataloging Information 176 Processed by Susan Fletcher 12 March 2004 Revised by Sarah Newell and Barbara Quigley, 30 September 2008 Revised by Barbara Quigley, 28 August 2018 Manuscript and Visual Collections Department William Henry Smith Memorial Library Indiana Historical Society 450 West Ohio Street Indianapolis, IN 46202-3269 www.indianahistory.org COLLECTION INFORMATION VOLUME OF 2012 reels, 30 VHS videotape user copies of 90 films, 10 films COLLECTION: copied on DVD COLLECTION 1920–1980 (bulk 1949–1980) DATES: PROVENANCE: WRTV (McGraw-Hill Broadcasting, Inc.) Channel 6, Indianapolis, Ind., 19 February 1986 RESTRICTIONS: None COPYRIGHT: Indiana Historical Society was given whatever copyrights the donor held in these films, effective 1 January 2001. REPRODUCTION Permission to reproduce or publish material in this collection RIGHTS: must be obtained from the Indiana Historical Society. ALTERNATE FORMATS: RELATED HOLDINGS: ACCESSION 1986.0786 NUMBER: NOTES: Researchers must use VHS and/or DVD copies of films and not the original reels of films. Where copies do not presently exist, they can be made upon request for a fee. Indiana Historical Society WRTV Film Collection Page 1 HISTORICAL SKETCH WRTV-6 began its service to the Indianapolis, Indiana, community in 1924 as the radio station WFBM. By 1925 the radio station was broadcasting several different programs from its location in the Indianapolis Athletic Club, including church services, election coverage, a program from Wheeler Mission, basketball games, and coverage of the “500- Mile Race.” In the 1940s chief engineer Harold Holland and Frank Sharp turned their eyes toward the emerging world of television. Holland and Sharp prepared their station for telecasting, installing a TV studio in the station’s new headquarters and a 228-foot TV and FM tower on top of the Merchants Bank Building. Their gamble paid off, and in 1949 WFBM-TV became the first Indianapolis television station. The excitement leading up to WFBM’s first telecast was enormous. In March 1949 The Indianapolis Electric League teamed with local distributors to sponsor a television expo at the Manufacturer’s Building at the State Fairgrounds. Local stores proudly displayed their television sets, urging customers to be the first on their block to own one. TV sets ranged from $250 for a standard RCA set to $2,565 for a deluxe Dumont television-radio- phonograph combination. Indianapolis residents eagerly anticipated Memorial Day weekend that year, for WFBM- TV was scheduled to come on the air in time to provide televised coverage of the 1949 500-Mile Race. On May 30, 1949, television dealers invited customers into their stores to witness the birth of Indianapolis’ first TV station, and new television set owners invited their friends over to view the race. At 10:00 am, viewers tuned their sets to Channel 6 and saw the very first WFBM-TV pre-recorded program, Crucible of Speed, a history of the Motor Speedway. At 11:00 am, WFBM-TV began its ground-breaking live coverage of the 500-Mile Race, with cameramen stationed on the home stretch, pit areas, and Grandstand E. The coverage of the race was a success. Nevertheless, after 1950, race officials decreed that live coverage cease because they were afraid that people would stop purchasing tickets to the Indy 500 in favor of staying home and watching it on television. In the summer of 1949 the station operated during the early evening hours, showing films, newsreels, basketball games, and kinescopes of live programs. It also telecasted Indianapolis Indians baseball games from Victory Field. Its first full-length Indiana feature was The Perfect Memorial, a show about the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children. The 1950s were a decade of growth and change for the station. In 1951 WFBM-TV partnered with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra to film a series of concerts, and in 1952 it teamed with Life magazine to produce a series of documentaries on Indianapolis schools entitled Life Goes to School. In 1953 Indiana Bell Telephone Company began sponsoring coverage of the high school basketball tournaments. Some of the most beloved WFBM personalities came to the station during the 1950s. Tom Carnegie became the director of sports in 1953 and stayed until 1985. He was the television voice for the Indiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament, he covered the Olympics, and he did features such as With a Name Like Unser and The Flying Scot. Howard Indiana Historical Society WRTV Film Collection Page 2 Caldwell came to the station in 1959 as the news editor and he produced the early and late news shows that he also anchored. He also covered the 1963 Indiana State Fairgrounds explosion that killed 74 people. Bill Crawford did the weather for WFBM, and Harry Martin also did weather as well as news broadcasts and farm reports. When vice president of the station Wayne Coy had a fatal heart attack, Eldon Campbell became the general manager in 1958. Bob Gamble was the head of the news department, and the station received several awards under his leadership. In 1957 Harry Bitner sold WFBM to Time-Life, Inc., beginning a long partnership between the station and Time-Life Productions. Many of the documentaries that WFBM produced such as A Helping Hand . Not a Handout bore the Time-Life mark. During this era, the television station had two studios at their location at 1330 N. Meridian, furnished with the most modern equipment and even a permanent kitchen set. The station produced live shows, news broadcasts, and documentaries. In 1961 the station began partnering with several universities and other channels throughout the region to produce the (MPATI). This initiative was a collaboration between Indiana University, Purdue University, and eight other schools to broadcast classroom programs on videotape directly to classrooms in the Midwest. William Fall was the operations officer for MPATI and the Ford Foundation funded the project with $16 million. A DC-7 plane equipped with television equipment circled over northern Indiana, serving as a super-antenna to broadcast over 200 miles. At that time, the normal reach for a ground transmitter was only about seventy miles so this new scheme represented a technological breakthrough. MPATI was on the air four days a week, from the mid-morning until mid- afternoon, and by 1962 was reaching over 1,200 schools in a six-state area in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Parents could tune their televisions to a UHF station to watch the programs that their children’s teachers were showing simultaneously. The station received numerous awards for various projects. WFBM received the Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award for editorials that eventually ended the practice of open-dump burning in Indianapolis. The station also received the Peabody Award and the Saturday Review magazine's Independent Television Award for its 1970 documentary The Negro in Indianapolis. WFBM had a long history of commitment to international issues. For example, Howard Caldwell interviewed Indira Gandhi right after Nehru died, Bob Gamble did a special on the Berlin Wall, and Gene Slaymaker did a group of films about poverty and hunger in South America. In June 1972 McGraw-Hill Companies bought the station and changed its call-letters to WRTV. In its developmental years, the station had been affiliated with both NBC and CBS, but in 1979 it became permanently affiliated with the ABC Television Network. Barbara Boyd was a popular figure during the 1970s and 1980s, coming to the station in 1969. She was the first African American woman on Indianapolis television and served for twenty-five years as a consumer reporter. She is most famous for doing a series about breast cancer, broadcasting from her own hospital bed after her mastectomy. In 1980 Indiana Historical Society WRTV Film Collection Page 3 Howard Caldwell began a series called Howard’s Indiana, a series of films about interesting places in the state. During the last two decades the station has remained a leader in the Indianapolis television market. In 1987 WRTV was the first station in Indianapolis to have a ninety-minute early- evening news broadcast. That same year, Diane Willis replaced Howard Caldwell at the anchor desk, becoming the station’s first anchorwoman. Some of the station’s initiatives assist the Indianapolis community, including Call 6 for Help. In the last few years the station has partnered with Internet Broadcasting Systems to launch its website, TheIndyChannel.com, to provide Indianapolis up-to-date weather information, breaking news coverage, and community information. Sources: Indiana Broadcasters Pioneers Foundation, Inc. Oral History Project Collection, 1994-1997 (M 0744, CT 0815–CT 0901). Indiana Historical Society. “Learn More About the History of WRTV,” (http://www.theindychannel.com/station/124111/detail.html). Accessed 7 August 2008. Vaughn, Gene. From Crystal to Color: WFBM. Indianapolis, Ind.: WFBM Stations, 1964. General Collection: HE8698 .F7 1964 Weintraut, Linda and Jane R. Nolan. “In the Public Interest:” Oral Histories of Hoosier Broadcasters. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 1999. General Collection: PN1990.6.U6 I5 1999 Indiana Historical Society WRTV Film Collection Page 4 SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE The WRTV collection consists of 2012 reels of film representing 437 film titles, almost all of them 16mm film in format. The library is not equipped for viewing of the original film reels. Some of the final-version films have been copied to VHS or DVD and can be viewed in the library. The collection includes thirty VHS videotape user copies of 90 titles in the collection and copies of a few titles on DVD. More films may be copied to DVD for a fee in response to researcher requests.